The Railroad Page

My Railroad Map

By Tor P., 3rd Grade

Click the map to see a larger image

This is my map of Oregon. It only has the railroads on it. It has lots of railroads. BNSF stands for Burlington Northern Santa Fe. I drew this just by memory after seeing a map just like this in a railroad magazine. And now, here is a story of a squirrel who lives in Seattle who gets stuck on a train.

Piece of Cream's Big Journey

There was a squirrel at the baseball field one day in Seattle. His name was Piece Of Cream.* He was watching trains. One train came in and stopped. He thought, “Maybe I should jump on and see what it’s like in one of those box cars.” So he jumped on, but the next thing he knew the box car that he was in was moving and out the open door the country side around Seattle was whizzing by. “Oh no,” he thought. Next thing he knew, the train was approaching Portland. The train stopped in Portland. He thought, “Great!, I can get off now.” Right before he was about to get off, someone jumped right in front of him and shoved some boxes in his face. “Well that didn’t work,” he thought. They were just loading some boxes on. Suddenly the train started moving again. He noticed out the other door that he was now traveling along the Columbia River Gorge. He likes the Columbia River Gorge but not when he was on a train traveling somewhere very far away. He passed through lots of cities and then he noticed across the river there was an amazing railroad bridge. The train had to stop to wait for a train to cross the bridge. He thought, “Great, another chance to get off!” Then he realized that there was a cliff on one side of the other the train that had just crossed the bridge and was whizzing by. Suddenly the train started moving again. A few minutes later, he noticed some rolling hills and wheat fields out both sides of the train. He thought, “Well, I got out of the gorge and I don’t know where I am now.” He was in eastern Washington and in not very long he was in Idaho and eventually in Montana. When he was going through Montana he thought he saw a nice looking squirrel sitting on the tracks but it went too fast for him to jump off into its arms. After Montana he found the train stopping in a small town in North Dakota, but right as he was going to get off someone else jumped up and shoved more boxes in his face. Just another stop for loading more on. After that it was almost the end of the day and he was very tired when the train finally came to a stop. He zipped off into the cold Minnesota night. He thought, “Oh no! Now I’m in Minnesota, how could I get back home?” Suddenly, up behind him popped a prairie dog. He said, “Are you lost?” Piece of Cream said, “Yes.” The prairie dog said, “Well I have a friend who is a burrowing owl, and he could fly you home. Where are you from?” Piece of Cream said, “Seattle.” “Burrowie, this little squirrel wants a lift back to Seattle. Could you give him a wing?” Burrowie said, “Sure.” He hopped on the burrowing owl’s back and in no time he was back in his cozy tree nest in Seattle.

The End

* Piece of Cream is a funny name because you can’t really have a piece of cream; you can have a dollop, but not a piece!

Nibbles and Bickett

by Tor P., 3rd Grade

Nibbles and Bickett find a grain train, take some great photos, then jump in for a snack!

This page in print (pdf)

All work by Tor P.